Optical fibers continue to play an increasingly important role in many commercial and military applications. In many instances, it is highly desirable to wind extremely long lengths of optical fiber onto bobbins for high density winding applications. Optical fibers are known to be delicate, however, and cuts, nicks, bruises, or other disruptions to the fiber can lead to catastrophic failure during fast payout and can lead to significant degradation of the optical transmissivity of the fiber.
Many current techniques for winding optical fiber onto bobbins have included manual steps and have had to consider the extremely sensitive nature of the optical fiber.
Such techniques have employed a teflon sleeve, for example, which is mounted on the bobbin during prewinding and which later receives the optical fiber. The optical fiber is inserted through the sleeve by hand, and the bobbin is then ready for final winding.
Unfortunately, many problems attend the use of the sleeve. In many cases, the sleeve will be crimped or bent during mounting on the bobbin. Such discontinuities make later insertion of the optical fiber through the sleeve extremely difficult, often requiring many hours of extra effort in some cases. In other cases, the sleeve is discovered to have been received from the vendor with debris inside. In such cases, the debris may not be detected until after the sleeve has been mounted on the bobbin, a base fiber layer wound onto the bobbin, and an unsuccessful attempt made to insert the optical fiber through the sleeve. Such impediments to inserting the optical fiber are extremely costly, and require possible discarding of the entire bobbin or installation of a new sleeve on the original bobbin. Since the sleeve is sometimes mounted to the bobbin by a slow curing process using an adhesive, finding the sleeve unsuitable after mounting is extremely undesirable and costly.